The latest episode of the podcast is now available. The show notes are available below, along with downloads. If you prefer to stream it live, then the YouTube version is available at the bottom of this post. Don’t forget you can subscribe to techAU via iTunes and Zune.

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HD 720p version (660MB)
iPod version (170MB)
MP3 version (27MB)

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Tech.Ed Australia

• Strange year (Win8, Mango not quite here)
• Developer interviews
• Keynote
• Opening Party (Forza 4, Star Wars Kinect)
• Media Showcase
• Family HQ
• Green Button
• Ezi Data Solutions
• Cloud Media Roundtable (CTO MS AU)
• Soul Solutions
• Resonate Solutions
• Windows SDK
• Closing Party

Build Conference

• Starts Wednesday, Windows 8 detailed.
• Fast Boot times, Hyper-V support, ISO and VHD files, Ribbon UI in Explorer, Copying files, duplicate files. * Build Windows blog – http://blogs.msdn.com/b8/
• Long Zheng from iStartedSomething.com is at the event.

Review: MacBook Air

• Great buying experience
• Bootcamp 4.0 is awesome
• SD Card slot, battery life

TiVo Elite announced, we miss out again

• 4 tuners, 2TB hard drive
• CEO of Hybrid TV has left, CMO taking over.
• Business as usual – that’s the problem.

Yahoo CEO fired

• Carol Bartz, dumped by CEO
• Yahoo news, flickr still strong
• Skydrive making unlimited docs and photos.. impact on Flickr ?

On June 16th this year, Microsoft made the Kinect for Windows SDK available for enthusiasts. This was an official release providing access to all the Kinect hardware, unlike the hacks that came before it. Since then, Kinect is being used in new and exciting ways, yep, your a creative lot.

I sat down with Stuart Tansley, acting product manager for Kinect for Windows SDK from Microsoft Research and Lawrence Crumpton, Academic Developer Evangelist, to discuss how people are using the SDK. We also discussed why we still don’t have voice controls in Australia, the commercial release of the Kinect SDK and much more.

For more info, head over to Kinect For Windows SDK. For all the creative creations, check out http://www.kinecthacks.com/.

Joris Dries, from Resonate Solutions discusses why they chose to use Windows Azure and how they are working with large companies like Qantas and Rebel Sports to improve customer experiences. Check out the interview from Tech.Ed Australia below.

More information @ http://resonatesolutions.com.au/

Ezi Data Solutions have created a Windows Phone app called TrafficMate. This app uses up-to-the-minute information on traffic congestion caused by peak times, accidents, road works etc, to allow for live re-routing. GPS as we know them today choose the most efficient route from A to B based on estimated time on standard conditions.. i.e. speed being 100km/hr which assumes traffic travels at 100km/h along that stretch of road. In reality, we all know the story is quite different.

Constantly changing conditions mean that route A may have been the fastest way at first, but due to an accident and one lane being closed, that route B is now the more efficient path. This indicates the power of having live information by  comparison to out-of-date and effectively incorrect information.

User-submitted traffic events and incidents contribute significantly to the TrafficMate data which adds to data.gov.au data. The app polls the server every minute to check for updated incidents to keep you up-to-date information relevant to your situation. The application currently supports QLD and NSW with plans for other states and cities to follow shortly.

Cameron Moses and James Burning from Ezi Data Solutions sat down with techAU for a chat about TrafficMate at Tech.Ed Australia 2011.

TrafficMate is available in the WP7 Marketplace for free now! For more information, check out http://trafficmate.com.au

TransHub is a Windows Phone application looking to solve traffic congestion issues in your city. TransHub can instantly recommend the fastest routes to your desired location across multiple transit methods. Soul Solutions created the TransHub application, using NSW government transport data for Sydney to deliver timetabled information, on-demand journey calculations, fare prices and alerts.

There are currently a number of public transportation vehicles that contain live GPS tracking. Unfortunately, only some of that geolocation data from trains, trams, ferries and busses, is exposed to developers. Governments around Australia should be encouraged to expose more or all of this data so developers can build apps and services to help solve traffic congestion issues in our cities.

During Tech.Ed this week, I sat down with John O’Brien from Soul Solutions to discuss the app and winning the crowd-voted Spotlight competition.

The TransHub Sydney WP7 application is now available in the Marketplace available for A$4.49, a free is also available.

For more information head to http://transhub.com

During last night’s closing party at Tech.Ed Australia, attendees were treated to something pretty special. Two hotly anticipated upcoming games, Forza 4 and Star Wars Kinect were actually playable at the event. Forza 4 is due for release on the 11th of October and Star Wars Kinect was recently postponed till early 2012 release.

Forza 4 showed off some stunning visuals including tweaks to the lighting system to increase realism. Its understood that previous generations required hard coded brightness / exposure levels in certain locations because the engine wasn’t able to accurately display how the car should look.

One of the biggest questions and concerns hard-core racing sim and Forza fans have is the integration or use of Kinect in Forza 4. The good news is that Forza 4 uses Kinect in a very subtle and optional way as developers Turn10 were conscious of not dumbing it down just to appeal to entry-level gamers. Forza 4 is a driving game that uses Kinect, rather than a Kinect Game.

Star Wars Kinect was also enjoyed by attendees, allowing for the childhood lightsaber-wielding fantasies to come true. One of the biggest concerns with the game is input lag. After early builds were shown to be laggy, developers worked hard on updates to solve the issue. Its difficult to say which build was on display last night, but there was still a small lag between players movements and the Kinect interpretation translating to on-screen movement. Given the game is delayed now, this may be a problem they need some more time to solve to get the experience right before unleashing it on the public. That aside, the attendees that did play, were having a bunch of fun.

Update
Star Wars Kinect on display last night was the same build from E3 earlier this year.

Those non-gaming attendees were treated to a variety of other entertainment during the closing party. Go-Karts in the underground car park, comedy and music performances in the main arena and an array of sporting events on the show floor.

This year, Tech.Ed broke the keynote into 2 distinct audiences, IT Pro and Developer. One of the most impressive demo’s during the developer keynote was from GreenButton. CTO of Green Button, Dave Fellows showed off how a large 3D rending job can be distributed across Azure to perform incredibly time expensive compute tasks, in a matter of seconds rather than minutes.

During the demo attendees seen a complete 3D rendering drawn block by block in just 20 seconds, a task that would typically take around 30 minutes. This was achieved by distributing the workload across a number of high powered servers, but because the compute hours spent was low, the cost of using this extreme horsepower amounts to very little.

GreenButton has plugins for major modelling applications like Blender, as well as a SDK to allow developers to integrate with their existing applications. With a simple elegant web front end, jobs are not only managed, but also costed. Green Button provides a cost back to the users of just how much that task cost, so there’s no waiting for an end of the month bill.

This kind of immediate horsepower at an affordable rate will fundamentally transform the way design and animation firms work. Wether it be creating the next Pixar movie or working out the fluid dynamics of an F1 car, GreenButton on top of Windows Azure is making a massive impact in the economics of business.

I got a chance to sit down with Fellows and discuss the New Zealand origined company, to discuss GreenButton at Microsoft’s Tech.Ed conference.

More info @ http://www.greenbutton.net/

Family HQ is a new concept in social networking – it’s private. An Internet start-up that is 100% owned and developed within Australia, Family HQ is the first Australian social network of this type. During Microsoft’s Tech.Ed conference I got a chance to sit down with the Co-Founders Jase and Brooke Farmer.

Family HQ was created as a result of a personal need, that was then requested by friends. The private social network is designed for those that want to keep content private, so security is strong focus. 

More info @ FamilyHQ.com

There is a trend developing amongst Australian companies. Those who went down the outsourcing route, are now reining back services and looking to cloud solutions to solve common business functions. With this trend, a number of questions arise around the storage of sensitive data outside Australian borders.

Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft Australia, Greg Stone, says there is actually no legislation in place that requires businesses to store private information in Australia. This is a common misconception which is often quickly dissolved when legal advice is sought, rather than just assuming or following hearsay. One exception suggested was highly sensitive government information that may need to be stored locally for national security reasons.

Often concerns about the ability for foreign governments to force the turnover of data adds to the concern of data centres being located off-shore. In reality, the ability for international governments to request data is enabled through existing channels, wether the documents be stored in a filing cabinet, or on a server. 

Science fiction has always taught us to think about the possibilities of technology far into the future. In fact, many technological developments have been heavily inspired by what we see in movies, often making that a reality is a a timely and very costly exercise. For consumers, its a frustrating wait to go from where we are today, to what we know will be reality in the years to come.

We’ve all been teased by concept videos, but here at Tech.Ed, Microsoft are demonstrates a working application that integrates a Windows Phone, Microsoft Surface and Windows Slate to form a futuristic experience. By placing a WP7 device on the Surface, the user interface is expanded beyond the device to the table below.

Smart phones are great, but the current trend in screen size is certainly up. From 3”, to 3.5” to 4” and even 4.3” and beyond, it shows that more screen real estate is needed. By transferring the content from your small portable device, to a large, interactive display, it solves 2 problems. First of all you don’t need to try and fit a surface in your pocket, second of all you can keep the portability of a mobile phone while accessing a larger display.

So while the concept works, and even extends to tablets or ‘slates’, there are a couple of issues with it going from a neat demo to a reality in your home. The first is the price and availability of the Surface table. You’ll notice in the video that the Surface being used is still a version 1 (i.e. a big freakin table). Version 2 Surfaces are yet to make it to Australia, after being shown off at CES in January.

The second issue is the technology being used for the devices to communicate with one another. Right now devices that interact with the Surface, namely WP7 and Slates require a special tag to be placed on the back. This seriously needs to be NFC. Given this is a technology demo, this part of the problem is really up to developers and hardware manufacturers to solve.